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Prisoners used smartphones to store images of child abuse in the cloud

Prisoners at Fort Dix in New Jersey were able to operate a ring of child sexual abuse imagery using smartphones, a cloud, and the dark web.

According to NBC News, all five of the prisoners charged had been convicted of possessing and/or distributing images of child sexual abuse already — internet access is the last thing you’d want them to have. But one prisoner managed to buy a smartphone for $900, which he rented out at an hourly rate, according to another prisoner who acted as a mole. They downloaded the offensive images from the dark web into a shared cloud account — no specific companies or brands being named in the report.

They aren’t the first prisoners to get internet access under the noses of guards. Matt wrote about inmates jerry-rigging computers and hiding them in the ceiling, and said he had a grudging respect for their ingenuity. Well here’s what it looks like when the activities in question are less roguishly charming.

How were they able to get away with it? The prison is low-security, and look-outs alerted the prisoners whenever the officer in charge of their unit would leave the office. They’d hide their smuggled phone in light fixtures and under lockers. It’s actually rather scary how easy it sounds, especially since audio recorded by the mole shows they had no scruples about it and at least one says he’s not going to stop.

I think all five can forget about getting out of prison any time soon. Since the reports don’t say which of the five was the mole, I hope they worry themselves to death trying to figure out which one of them sold the rest out.